The people of the south were mainlyFlemings andWalloons. Both peoples were traditionallyRoman Catholic as contrasted with Protestant-dominated (Dutch Reformed) people of the north. Many outspoken liberals regardedKing William I's rule as despotic. There were high levels of unemployment and industrial unrest among the working classes.[4]
On 25 August 1830, riots erupted inBrussels and shops were looted. Theatregoers who had just watched the nationalistic operaLa muette de Portici joined the mob. Uprisings followed elsewhere in the country. Factories were occupied and machinery destroyed. Order was restored briefly after William committed troops to the Southern Provinces but rioting continued and leadership was taken up by radicals, who started talking of secession.[5]
Dutch units saw mass desertion of recruits from the southern provinces and pulled out. On 27 September, a newly formed Provisional Government in Brussels declared independence and called for the election of aNational Congress.[6] King William refrained from future military action and appealed to theGreat Powers. The resulting1830 London Conference of major European powers recognised Belgian independence. Following the installation ofLeopold I as King of the Belgians in 1831, King William made a belated attempt to reconquer Belgium and restore his position through a military campaign. ThisTen Days' Campaign failed because of French military intervention. The Dutch accepted the decision of the London conference and Belgian independence in 1839 by signing theTreaty of London.
After the defeat of Napoleon at theBattle of Waterloo in 1815, theCongress of Vienna created a kingdom for theHouse of Orange-Nassau, thus combining theUnited Provinces of the Netherlands with the formerAustrian Netherlands to create a strongbuffer state north of France; with the addition of those provinces the Netherlands became a rising power.[7] When the United Kingdom insisted on retaining the formerDutch Ceylon and theCape Colony, which it had seized while the Netherlands was ruled by Napoleon, the new Kingdom of the Netherlands was compensated with these southern provinces.
The revolution was due to a combination of factors, the main one being the difference of religion (Catholic in today'sBelgium,Protestant in today'sNetherlands) and the general lack of autonomy given to the south.
Other important factors are
The under-representation of today's Belgians in the General Assembly (62% of the population for 50% of the seats)[8]
Most of the institutions were based in the North and public burdens were unevenly distributed. Only one minister out of four was Belgian. There were four times as many Dutch people in the administration as Belgians.[9] There was a general domination of the Dutch over the economic, political, and social institutions of theKingdom;
The public debt of the north (higher than that of the south) had to be supported by the south as well.[9] The original debts were initially of 1.25 billion guilders for the United Provinces and only 100 million for the South.
The action ofWilliam I in the field of education (construction of schools, control of the competence of teachers and the creation of new establishments, creation of three State universities) placed it under the total control of the State, which displeased Catholic opinion.[10]
The contingent imposed on Belgium by the recruitment of militiamen was proportionally high, while the proportion of Belgians among the officers was low, the high staff being mainly composed of former officers of the French army or of the British army. Only one officer out of six would be from the South.[11] Most Belgian soldiers were therefore commanded by officers who were not originally from the Southern Netherlands. Moreover, the Dutch language had become the sole language of the army of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1823/24, which was an additional grievance on the part of the francophone elites and the Walloon people who spoke Romance dialects.
The unsatisfactory application of freedom of the press and freedom of assembly were considered by Belgian intellectuals as a means of control of the South by the North.
Belgian merchants and industrialists complained about the free trade policy pursued from 1827 onwards. The separation of France had caused the industry of the South to lose a large part of its turnover. On the other hand, the colony of theEast Indies was experiencing a long period of revolt and British products were competing with Belgian production. With the end of the continental blockade, the continent was invaded by cheap British products, appreciated by the North, still mainly agricultural, but which excluded the productions of the South.
A linguistic reform in 1823 was intended to make Dutch the official language in theFlemish provinces. This reform was met with strong opposition from the upper classes who at the time were mostly French-speaking, whether they came fromFlanders orWallonia,[12] but also from the Flemish speakers themselves, who at the time did not speak standardDutch but their own dialects. On 4 June 1830, this reform was abolished.[13]
The conservatives in the northern Netherlands were pushing for only followers of the former (Protestant)State Church to be appointed to the government, while the Belgian conservatives wanted to re-establishCatholicism as thestate religion in Belgium. The coexistence of two state religions throughout the kingdom was unacceptable to both sides. Until 1821 the government used the opposition of theCatholics to theBasic Law to maintain theProtestant character of the state apparatus through the appointment of civil servants.William I himself was a supporter of the GermanLutheran tradition, according to which the sovereign is the head of the church. He wanted to counter thePope's authority over theCatholic Church. He wanted to be able to influence the appointment ofbishops.[14]
Catholic partisans watched with excitement the unfolding of theJuly Revolution in France, details of which were swiftly reported in the newspapers. On 25 August 1830, at theThéâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, an uprising followed a special performance, in honor of William I's birthday, ofDaniel Auber'sLa Muette de Portici(The Mute Girl of Portici), a sentimental and patriotic opera set againstMasaniello's uprising against the Spanish masters of Naples in the 17th century. After the duet, "Amour sacré de la patrie" (Sacred love of Fatherland), withAdolphe Nourrit in the tenor role, many audience members left the theater and joined the riots which had already begun.[15] The crowd poured into the streets shouting patriotic slogans. The brawls and violence continued for several days, with protesters capturing key points in the city including theParc de Bruxelles and thePalais de Bruxelles. The Belgian rebels began to organize and fortify their positions in preparation for further confrontations with Dutch forces. The following days saw an explosion of the desperate and exasperated proletariat of Brussels, who rallied around the newly created flag of the Brussels independence movement which was fastened to a standard with shoelaces during a street fight and used to lead a counter-charge against the forces of Prince William.[citation needed]
Retreat of the Dutch cavalry on the Vlaamsesteenweg in Brussels, 1830
William I sent his two sons, Crown-Prince William andPrince Frederik to quell the riots. William was asked by the Burghers of Brussels to come to the town alone, with no troops, for a meeting; this he did, despite the risks.[16] The affable and moderate Crown Prince William, who represented the monarchy in Brussels, was convinced by the Estates-General on 1 September that the administrative separation of north and south was the only viable solution to the crisis. His father rejected the terms of accommodation that Prince William proposed. King William I attempted to restore the established order by force, but the 8,000 Dutch troops under Prince Frederik were unable to retake Brussels in bloody street fighting (23–26 September).[17] The army was withdrawn to the fortresses ofMaastricht,Venlo, andAntwerp, and when the Northern commander of Antwerp bombarded the town, claiming a breach of a ceasefire, the whole of the Southern provinces was incensed. Any opportunity to quell the breach was lost on 26 September when a National Congress was summoned to draw up a Constitution and theProvisional Government was established underCharles Latour Rogier. The Provisional Government then issued a Declaration of Independence on 4 October 1830.[18]
On 20 December 1830 theLondon Conference of 1830 brought together five major European powers: Austria, the United Kingdom, France, Prussia and Russia. At first, the European powers were divided over the Belgian cry for independence. TheNapoleonic Wars were still fresh in the memories of the major European powers, so once the French, under the recently installedJuly Monarchy, supported Belgian independence, the other European powers unsurprisingly supported the continued union of the provinces of the Netherlands. Russia, Prussia, Austria, and the United Kingdom all supported the Netherlands, since they feared that the French would eventually annex an independent Belgium (particularly the British: seeFlahaut partition plan for Belgium). However, in the end, none of the European powers sent troops to aid the Dutch government, partly because of rebellions within some of their own borders (the Russians were occupied with theNovember Uprising inPoland and Prussia was saddled with war debt). Britain would come to see the benefits of isolating France geographically with the new creation of a new Belgianbuffer state between France, the Netherlands and Prussia.
The Congress refused to consider any candidate from the Dutch rulinghouse of Orange-Nassau.[19] Eventually the Congress drew up a shortlist of three candidates, all of whom were French. This itself led to political opposition, andLeopold of Saxe-Coburg, who had been considered at an early stage but dropped due to French opposition, was proposed again.[20] On 22 April 1831, Leopold was approached by a Belgian delegation atMarlborough House to officially offer him the throne.[21] At first reluctant to accept,[22] he eventually took up the offer, and after anenthusiastic popular welcome on his way to Brussels,[23] Leopold I of Belgium took his oath as king on 21 July 1831.
21 July is generally used to mark the end of the revolution and the start of the Kingdom of Belgium. It is celebrated each year asBelgian National Day.
King William was not satisfied with the settlement drawn up in London and did not accept Belgium's claim of independence: it divided his kingdom and drastically affected his Treasury. On 2 August 1831 the Dutch army, headed by the Dutch princes, invaded Belgium, in what became known as the "Ten Days' Campaign". On 4 August the Dutch force took control of Antwerp and moved deeper into Belgium. The Belgian army of the Meuse was defeated in thebattle of Hasselt. On 8 August Leopold called for support from the French and the British. As a result MarshalÉtienne Maurice Gérard crossed the border with 70,000 French troops under his command on 9 August.
Thebattle of Leuven (where King Leopold had placed his headquarters) began on 12 August. In order to avoid war with the approaching French the Dutch agreed to an armistice with Belgium and withdrew after briefly taking control of the city. While the victorious initial campaign gave the Dutch an advantageous position in subsequent negotiations, the Dutch were compelled to agree to an indefinite armistice, although they continued to hold theAntwerp Citadel and occasionally bombarded the city from it. Gerard returned to Belgium in November 1832 with theArmée du Nord andbesieged the citadel taking it on 23 December 1832. William I would refuse to recognize a Belgian state until April 1839, when he had to yield under pressure by theTreaty of London and reluctantly recognized a border which, with the exception of Limburg and Luxembourg, was basically the border of 1790.
Germany broke the treaty in 1914 when itinvaded Belgium on 4 August and dismissed British protests over a "scrap of paper". Britaindeclared war on Germany the same day.[25]
As early as 1830 a movement started for the reunification of Belgium and the Netherlands, called Orangism (after the Dutch royal colour oforange), which was active in Flanders and Brussels. But industrial cities, like Liège, also had a strong Orangist faction.[26] The movement met with strong disapproval from the authorities. Between 1831 and 1834, 32 incidents of violence against Orangists were mentioned in the press and in 1834 Minister of JusticeLebeau banned expressions of Orangism in the public sphere, enforced with heavy penalties.[27]
In 2005, the Belgian revolution of 1830 was depicted in one of the highest value Belgian coins ever minted, the 100 euro"175 Years of Belgium" coin. The obverse depicts a detail fromWappers' paintingScene of the September Days in 1830.
^Slatin, Sonia. "Opera and Revolution: La Muette de Portici and the Belgian Revolution of 1830 Revisited",Journal of Musicological Research 3 (1979), 53–54.
^Porter, Maj Gen Whitworth (1889).History of the Corps of Royal Engineers Vol I. Chatham: The Institution of Royal Engineers. p. 390.
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